The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to processing graphics via an information handling system based on the monitoring of a power subsystem that provides power to the information handling system.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems such as, for example, desktop computing devices, laptop/notebook computing devices, and/or other computing devices known in the art, include power subsystems that provide the power that allows those computing devices to operate. For example, computing devices often utilize power adapters that couple the computing device to a power source (e.g., a wall outlet), and power adapters are “rated” based on their ability to provide particular characteristics of power (e.g., wattage, current, etc.) to computing devices. As such, computing devices must be utilized with properly rated power adapters that are configured to provide the power characteristics that the computing device needs in order to operate properly. The provisioning of power adapters with computing devices can raise a number of issues.
There are often particular computing device configurations and/or workloads that, when run on the computing device, can exceed the rating of particular power adapters. For example, higher performance graphics processing systems can cause relatively large spikes in power consumption by computing devices. Often, relatively lower rated power adapters will provide for the proper operation of a majority of the computing device configurations and/or a majority of the workloads expected to run on a computing device, while a few computing device configurations and/or workloads (e.g., graphics-intensive workloads) will exceed the rating of those relatively lower rated power adapters. Conventionally, the relatively higher rated power adapters are provided with computing devices if their computing device configurations and/or any of their possible workloads are known to exceed the rating of the relatively lower rated power adapters (e.g., a computing device that includes the high performance graphics processing system discussed above would be provided with the relatively higher rated power adapter.) The need to provide these relatively higher rated power adapters with computing devices based on their worst-case power loading conditions is undesirable, as the relatively higher rated power adapters are physically much larger than the relatively lower rated power adapters, and are associated with significant cost increases as well.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide for the ability to use relatively lower rated power adapters with computing devices that have computing device configurations and/or that may perform occasional workloads that can cause the computing device to exceed the rating of those relatively low rated power adapters.